With the increase in storage capacity of hard disk drives and the prevalence of optical CD and DVD drives, users now can store their entire musical libraries on their personal computer (PC). For example, various software programs such as iTunes (offered by Apple Computer) allow a user to load musical content from CDs, store it on the computer's hard disk drive, organize the different content, and then play the music on the PC or burn all or part of the musical collection onto a CD or DVD. Users also can transfer the musical files to other devices, such as an iPod (offered by Apple Computer) or an MP3 player. These transfers typically require a direct, hardwired connection between the PC and the device, such as through a USB cable.
In recent years, mobile handsets (such as cellular phones and PDAs) have evolved beyond mere telephone and data collection devices. For example, many cellular phones now have sophisticated display screens and audio capabilities. Various companies (including mSpot, Inc., the assignee of this application), offer audio and video content that is “streamed” to the cellular phone using a wireless cellular network. This allows cellular phone users to listen to music or other audio content and watch movies or other video content on their cellular phones. However, the user's choices are limited to the content offered by the provider. What is needed in the art is a system that allows a user of a mobile handset to obtain digital content that he or she previously had stored on a personal computer or other device by downloading the content over a wireless network and to store it on the mobile handset.
In addition, today's systems offer fragmented digital content services that require a user to go to different web-sites, different devices or different services to be able to gain access to their digital content, such as Internet radio, music collections, news, local radio and full track music for example. Thus, it is desirable to provide a system that can store all of the different types of digital content in one location and allow the user to access the digital content and it is to this end that the disclosure is directed.
In addition, with the vast volume of digital content that is stored and potentially can be stored in a computing cloud, it is desirable to provide recommendations to users who access the computing cloud to assist them in finding digital content that is correlated with their personal preferences and patterns. It would also be desirable for the recommendations to be based at least in part on the preferences and patterns of members of a user's social network.
The prior art also includes digital content players, such as iPods or other computing devices, that allow a user to select a playlist or other grouping of digital content and to play an item in that playlist or other grouping, and then once the player has finished playing that item, to select another item from that playlist or grouping and begin playing that item without further user instruction. Using this prior art device, the player will always be playing digital content and the user can enjoy the content without constantly instructing the player what to play next. The prior art also includes a queuing feature, such as on the Rhapsody music service, whereby a user can create a queue of digital content and then the computing device plays items in the order contained in the queue. Once the computing device finishes playing all of the items in the queue, the computing device typically will have nothing left to play and will remain idle until further instructed by the user. This results in an undesirable downtime where nothing is being played. In addition, in the prior art, if the user is playing items in the queue and then selects an item that is not in the queue (for example, a song that is listed elsewhere), the computing device typically will stop playing items in the queue and will start playing the item selected by the user. Once that item is done playing, the computing device will have nothing to play and will go into downtime again. It would be desirable to create an improved system whereby the user can create a queue, while the queue is playing select an item that is not in the queue, and then have the system automatically play other items within the selection from which that item was chosen so there is no downtime.